No. The whole point was to develop hydroponic plants. So they are all bare except for the equisetum (horsetail rush), which, after more reading, DK learned needs silicates and therefore substrate. She also nearly killed the horsetail when it first arrived, putting it aside, busy with other things, and it dried out a few days before she remembered it!

*********

IN OTHER NEWS:

Wetwedding project 25

We continue our discussion, in review:

The options on a commercial scale are:

Ion Exchange using strong base anion resins regenerated with NaCl

Biological Denitrification using Methanol or Ethanol addition

Electrodialysis or Electrodialysis Reversal

Reverse Osmosis

We've ruled out (2) above on the basis of capacity and logistics.

Now, we look at (1).

There would be two approaches to this. One would be to put resin pouches into filters. The second approach would be a centralized system with a treatment canister of resin.

In the first case, it's labor intensive, expensive, and wasteful, as the pouches would then be disposable upon exhaustion, or it would be a pain to manually regenerate and repackage them. It's also probably not even feasible as the pouches would exhaust quickly in an automated system (DK does water changes TWICE DAILY, not ONCE WEEKLY - that's a LOT more nitrates to soak up) and not all at the same time, causing a logistical nightmare.

In the second case, it's somewhat less labor intensive, as there is only one canister to babysit, but it would still need periodic refilling and then a system to backflush it with salt solution in between refillings, to regenerate the resin.

Nitrate specific resin is on the order of $400 per cubic foot. To run DK's waterworld, she'd want a canister with a few cubic feet (which would probably need to be replaced every quarter or six months), and an automated flush/regeneration system. This system is very expensive and also heavily reliant on proprietary product. Not only that, it pumps more salt into DK's septic system, which references pKaz's question. She is already pumping salt into her water for the whole house treatment method - her well water is so acidic it ate through her plumbing, forcing her to both re-plumb her mains in the house, and also put the whole house on an acid-treatment system for all the water. This whole house water treatment system adds a heavy sodium (salt) load to ALL her water that ends up in her septic tank. So therefore, she has an outside constraint that discourages her from putting too much water or too much salt into her drains, as it sucks up the capacity of her septic drainfield and isn't good for it. DK nixes anion binding resin, due to these reasons.

She next looks into (3) - Electrodialysis. It's a cool concept, and would work, but is too new a technology to have any products available on a non-commercial scale or price range.

OK, so some of you who fancy yourself clever had honed in on (4) days ago.

Yeah, big deal. So DK plunks down a B. Franklin or two or three or.... and gets herself an RO system.

Has the aura of stepping back in time, to the age of Marvel Comic Books. You feel like you should be riding a rocket ship, wearing a glass bubble on your head with big clompy boots and puffy gloves, exploring space. And she is part of your ship.

Lots and lots of different things this momma can do, for DK. Very versatile.

It's all done, except for the tie-in to the powered circuit (one leg of it is getting hard-wired), which Other Geek will do in the morning.

DK is now slightly geekier. Before tonight, she had no clue what this picture meant. Now, she does. She looks at it now, and it seems so obvious. It's like one of those pictures that contains hidden pictures. You stare and stare and can't see anything, then all of a sudden you see one of the hidden pictures, and from then on you can't help but see it.

MY bride is much more attractive than that sleazy chick, once you learn how to view her.

Her name is:

RO-DKstyle

And those of you with the mettle to read the upcoming posts will see, she is a complexity. It's not just WHAT she does... it's HOW she does it.When her groom says, "Baby... I need me some..." -- this girl puts out. And. She is in control.

First, an executive summary. Here, we begin to weed out the lookieloos from the hardcore geeks, especially since in today's post there are NUMBERS and NO PICTURES.

What are the global goals of this project, and global landscape to accomplish it?

The first is simple: pull down the nitrates level in the water that enters Water Factory III to under 10 ppm. I didn't want it completely cleared of nitrates, as I want a small amount of nitrates for my plant mass in the tanks.

The second (global landscape) is where's the beef, in this project. Where it gets worse, our landscape.

Because, DK is on a well. And on a septic system. She lives in the boonies with the skunk and deer and even a possum the other night, and raccoon and foxes, you get the picture.

And now, a bit of very local geology. The soil surrounding her septic drain field is heavy clay.

So what this means is that you put the least amount of stuff into your septic tank, because your drainfield drains slowly, due to clay. Even water, although water is a bit negotiable.

Now, DK is ALREADY loading her septic drain field with quite a bit of extra water volume, due to twice daily water infusions into twenty-something tanks.

To add an RO system to this multiplies the water, because you typically waste 4 gallons of waste "brine" water to PRODUCE a gallon of RO water. 4:1 ratio

But, it gets worse.

When you have low water pressure going into an RO membrane (such as when you are on a well and not pressurized city water), your ratio increases.

But, it gets worse.

When you are trying to push that RO water into a pressurized storage tank rather than into an open vat with no back pressure, your ratio VASTLY increases, up to 100:1 toward the end, when you are pushing that product water into a nearly full, very pressurized bladder.

But, it gets worse. Those stats are for pushing RO water into a standard RO tank, which holds an initial back pressure of 5-10 psi.

DK is using a full-blown well tank, with much higher back pressure from the starting pressure to the finish pressure.

So let's see the vital stats, of what DK's Bride, RO-DKstyle has accomplished. Any of you RO reefers out there especially might appreciate these numbers.

We discuss the essence of this "marriage." Our "groom," being DK's Water Factory III, (which takes raw water and makes many different water profiles, depending on the tank it goes into) was being fed toxic, nitrate-laden water.

DK needed a cleaned-up water source, but she ALSO then needed the ability to feed that source INTO WFIII. This meant full automation and pressurization.

So today, an executive summary of how this all works.

DK thinks it's pretty coo-el. One of these days she's gonna have a techie shrimptern who can make some clips of this in action and youtube it. hint hint June is open peeps...

With our new "bride," RO-DKstyle, we now have a pressurized well tank full of cleaned water goodness. The pressurized tank feeds WFIII for the infusion cycle.

This is precisely timed and measured, such that at the last 10% of the cycle, the well tank is drawn down enough to trigger the pressure switch on our bride.

The pressure switch is spliced into our master power supply that controls the entire RO system. The master power supply is 24 vac.

Once the pressure drops enough in our well tank and the pressure switch is triggered, it closes the circuit to our master power supply, enabling the power supply to put out power to the system.

When the power supply puts out power to the system, that power triggers some relays.

One relay closes a circuit that enables powering of a 120 VAC power bank of outlets. This initiates powering anything that is plugged into those outlets, at the SAME time that our master power supply powers up.

The master power supply feeds into the pressure booster pump, powering it.

The relay 120 VAC bank powers two solenoid valves.

Valve one is the master water feed valve to the system. It is configured such that it is open exactly the same time the pump is operational, and closes exactly as the pump stops. This is important because our pump has a bypass circuit that enables water to flow past it even if the pump is not powered. This would cause low pressure leaking all the time the pump is not powered, wasting a lot of water. So we only allow water to the pump when the pump is powered.

The second valve is tied into a SECOND relay, the Macromatic. The Macromatic is an interval timing relay. The Macromatic is powered by the 120 VAC bank. So when the master power supply turns on, and turns the pressure booster pump on and opens the master water feed valve, the Macromatic is also powered at the same time.

The Macromatic is tied into the second solenoid valve, which is plumbed into a flush bypass loop for the RO membranes. The Macromatic is fully adjustable for time, so DK can assign it any time she wants.

When the Macromatic is powered, it starts its time interval. During its time interval, it powers the second solenoid valve, which opens it for that interval.

After the prescribed time interval, the Macromatic closes the second solenoid valve.

So, EACH time the RO system is activated, DK's RO membranes get a high pressure high flow power washing before they start their work. DK can control the length of time of this power washing by the twist of a shiny knob and the flip of a few switches on the Macromatic. She likes that, muchly.

After the second (flush) solenoid closes, the water is then re-channeled to cross the RO membranes.

The system then runs, producing product RO water, filling the well tank, building more pressure in the tank as it gets more full, until the pressure switch reads the end pressure and tells the master power supply to shut down.

When the master power supply shuts down, it shuts down the pressure booster pump, the master water valve, and the Macromatic. The system is now quiescent and tight as a drum.

The system is now re-set for the next draw-down, to be triggered again next time the pressure switch reads the lower threshold pressure.

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